S04.E19: Search and Destroy

[bros402]

I seem to recall that Root had her implant modified to pick up on infrared frequencies, so she could always communicate with the machine on those wavelengths. In this episode, she said she was picking up wifi signals, some of which might be on the infrared spectrum (which ranges pretty widely)? Or she could still pick up on them after her implant has converted the signals? I'm no physicist (only an amateur one, mostly based on my love for popular science books) so I don't know if that holds, but if it doesn't I can buy this as some kind of not-quite-real but plausible explanation.

 

WiFi uses specific radio bands. Perhaps the Machine made it so she can detect the bands it is on (I believe 2.4 GHz UHF and 5.0 GHz ISM) - and I suppose if the cochlear implant were modified, or perhaps had a part installed, she could detect WiFi signals - as there are FM transmitters that hook up right to Cochlear Implants (Not for listening to the radio, but for a mic to wirelessly link up to it)

[Oscirus]

Question. How did Khan get on the Machine's radar? Since it was Samaritan planning Khan's murder, it's unlikely the Machine could have seen visible signs of this planning (as it needs to to predict violence). Does the Machine see into Greer's lair? Can it see what Samaritan itself is planning?

 

Considering all of the online attacks that were suddenly happening against Khan, it was probably pretty easy for the machine to figure out what was going to happen.

 

Let's also remember that if Harold had agreed to kill that one Congressman like the Machine wanted him to, Samaritan probably wouldn't have gone online and all of the pain and terror of this season would have been avoided. It seems like the past year or so has been all about rubbing Harold's face in the fact that his noble stands are probably costing more lives than they are saving.

 

 

How is this on Harold? Everybody knows that Harold doesn't like killing. That screw up is on the machine for sending Harold to do that in the first place. Learn how to utilize your sources better.  If anything,  the machine should've sent Root on that mission?

 

I'm still waiting for ONE scene, just one, wherein he owns that maybe Shaw would be alive/uncaptured if he had offed the Congressman. Or that any of the people that Samaritan has killed might still be alive. Etc. Instead he's holding fast to his "we did the right thing, guys, REALLY" mentality.

 

That's an unfair argument. Using that argument, I could also put the blame on root since she's the one who abandoned those processors to save that Janitor.  Hell, we could also put the blame on Reese and Shaw since they didn't have to listen to Finch. 

 

I wasn't really a fan of this episode. I hate it when the POI is too stupid to live. At least this time, the POI paid the price with his life. I did appreciate that even thought Root and Finch weren't on speaking terms they were still able to work together without acting stupid about it.  I also like the season long philosophical war that's happening between Finch and Root. I do think that if Finch is ever forced to kill somebody that it would destroy him.  But yea, it's probably going to happen.

[ABay]

I've thought for a long time that Harold killing someone would be the end of the series, or at least the beginning of a rapidly escalating downward spiral to a cataclysmic end.

Edited April 9, 2015 by ABay

[Agent Dark]

How is this on Harold? Everybody knows that Harold doesn't like killing. That screw up is on the machine for sending Harold to do that in the first place. Learn how to utilize your sources better.  If anything,  the machine should've sent Root on that mission?

I think alot of people seem to be missing the point on that episode (3x20, "Death Benefit").  The Machine did not want to kill anyone, because that's what Harold taught her.  We've seen again and again how far The Machine will go to save non-relevant lives, so I don't accept for a minute that The Machine 'wanted' that Congressman dead.  I think The Machine did exactly what Harold originally built her to do - identify a problem and flag it to a human to act on it.  The conflict in that episode was 'what do we do about this problem?', not 'The Machine wants us to kill this guy'.  I also think that's why Root was explicitly not involved in that situation, since she wouldn't have stopped to question the ethics and morality of the choices.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Agent Dark

[immortalfrieza]

I think alot of people seem to be missing the point on that episode (3x20, "Death Benefit").  The Machine did not want to kill anyone, because that's what Harold taught her.  We've seen again and again how far The Machine will go to save non-relevant lives, so I don't accept for a minute that The Machine 'wanted' that Congressman dead.  I think The Machine did exactly what Harold originally built her to do - identify a problem and flag it to a human to act on it.  The conflict in that episode was 'what do we do about this problem?', not 'The Machine wants us to kill this guy'.  I also think that's why Root was explicitly not involved in that situation, since she wouldn't have stopped to question the ethics and morality of the choices.

If it didn't want Team Machine to kill the Senator it wouldn't have sent the number to Finch in the first place, it would have sent nothing or one of the other countless numbers instead. None of The Machine's actions and orders make any sense whatsoever throughout this entire arc.

 

If it didn't want the Senator dead, the Senator is only in danger in the first place BECAUSE Team Machine was sent after him.

If it did want the Senator dead then there's no reason to send a group of people after him that it knows obviously WILL NOT kill him. It could have sent Root or anonymously hired some mercenary to do it.

 

In fact, throughout this entire arc The Machine seems to have some sort of split personality. It sends it's agents out to stop Samaritan from coming online, but fails to provide adequate resources to do so while it is still more than capable of providing them, then once Samaritan is online seems to make little to no actual effort to stop it and it's agents afterwards despite all claims that it wants to do so.

[Netfoot]

 

Wild speculation: Caleb's compression algorithm + indestructable case + Samaritan actively searching for The Machine (which I'm soooo interested in, ps, I kind of want to meet The Machine myself!) = The Machine is going to get tiny and go into the briefcase? That sounds crazy, and yet.

 

I. LOVE. THIS. I now need it to happen. And, on this show, it just might.

 

I've been thinking something along those lines as well.  The Machine is cornered by Samaritan, and apparently destroyed, but Root escapes through the drains carrying a "boot image" of The Machine in the Case of Indestructible Carrying, as the final credits roll and we all start wishing the next season would hurry up and come. 

 

Or, better than a boot image, a fully functional Machine in said CoIC.  If so, we should give it a name other than "The Machine".  I  vote for "Orac".

[Starchild]

I love this show, though it does have two problems people have already mentioned: clumsy exposition and heavy-handed foreshadowing. I think both of those are due to being a Big-3 network show, CBS specifically.

 

Oh what this show could have been on AMC or HBO.

[beadgirl]

 

What's weird, though, is that the show refuses to let/have Finch confront these things directly (at least thus far). I'm still waiting for ONE scene, just one, wherein he owns that maybe Shaw would be alive/uncaptured if he had offed the Congressman. Or that any of the people that Samaritan has killed might still be alive. Etc. Instead he's holding fast to his "we did the right thing, guys, REALLY" mentality.

I've always written about Finch's hypocrisy (which, to reiterate, I find not obnoxious but a fascinating character trait), so my thoughts on this are coloured by my perception of him. Personally, though the show hasn't explicitly said he was wrong, I think it has been clear that his position is not one that can produce any kind of victory. We know that the Congressman's death would have prevented all this (which Root did say explicitly). We know that his insistence on sticking to his plan likely cost Khan his life (and Reese did allude to that, in a nice Reese way). He also ingested poison, basically, because he just couldn't stand it if another innocent person died, and he had a suicidal plan to stop Samaritan. So I feel that Finch is kind of grasping at straws this season. Also, in my opinion, his words to Reese in this episode, that Khan was likely on some beach, smacked of denial. So, while Finch isn't saying any of this out loud, I think the show has done a decent job of showing us that he has changed; not in his ways but in his feelings. Denial, denial, denial. And it's not like he's shown to be sanctimonious; this has gone beyond "we can't kill person A, it's wrong" (like the Congressman). Like you said, now we're at "we can't do that because we're the good guys and I will lose my shit if we hurt one more person and we're better than that and oh my God this is all my fault". (again, I may be projecting)

I don't think this is entirely fair to Finch, and I think there are two different scenarios going on.  If it is that Finch refuses to take a life, ever, not even in an immediate and obvious case of self-defense/defense of others, that's one thing.  It's certainly a legitimate stand to take, one that many pacificists have taken, but it does mean he's in the wrong line of work.

 

If, on the other hand, he does not want to take an innocent life, that's different, and it is a moral stance that I hold -- the ends do not justify the means.  He did not kill the senator because the senator was an innocent life who was not directly harming (or about to harm) anyone -- shady dealings notwithstanding.  I really appreciated Finch refusing to kill him, because it pegged him as the sole non-consequentialist on the show, and that is a very rare thing on tv today.  Most characters, and most people in this country, are consequentialists (or at least claim to be), and I love that there is someone who stands firm in his disagreement of that.  I don't at all want to see Finch become another Root in that sense.

 

If all this gun stuff is foreshadowing a finale where Finch has to fire a gun or kill a person, that could make for a very good bit of character development.  But it will depend in part on who the target is -- a Samaritan operative or even Greer, about to commit unspeakable evil? Or, say, the little boy who is the mouthpiece of Samaritan, or a totally innocent third party who just happens to be an unwitting lynchpiece the way the Senator or the woman he took the poison for was?

 

It could be, too, that the writers have not put nearly as much thought as I have into what exactly Finch means when he says he won't take a life, and it could be, as you said, that he is a non-consequentialist but is becoming overly-emotional and worn out as Samaritan increases its hold.  But I still think it is an important distinction to make when evaluating Finch's moral stance.

[stealinghome]

Some thoughts on rewatch:

 

The first time I watched the ep, I thought it took Finch and Reese too long to figure out it was Samaritan. This time around, how long it took Reese and Finch to figure out it was Samaritan was glaring. Finch should've at least suspected like two minutes into the case. When the best man in the world at cybersecurity gets hacked with such ease/impunity? If it's not Harold or Root, who else could it have been?

 

The pacing problems were also more apparent on rewatch. The second half of the ep felt rushed--it spent 2-5 more minutes getting Khan to Riker's than was optimal (he should've been arrested at the bar, or even just on the street when his wife walked away from him). Much like in MIA, the Samaritan's evil plot part of the ep was too sketchy when it was also the more interesting part of the episode. C'mon, writers, embrace the weird.

 

I think the team dinner is still the highlight of the episode. PoI really does have such a talented ensemble that bounce off each other so well--the writers need to give them more group scenes instead of pairing them off all the time. (I don't think all 4 Team Machine members, let alone plus Fusco, were on-screen together this season until the last three minutes of 4x11, and this was really the first time Finch/Root/Reese have been together since. And no Fusco with them.) But their banter before Khan woke up, and the way they all stared at him, was just hilarious. I would so watch an episode that was just Team Machine hanging out over drinks and busting each other. (And I hadn't noticed until someone on tumblr pointed it out, but Root got up from the table as soon as Khan mentioned the stock market crash. This show is SO GOOD at the little things.) Reese and Root particularly work surprisingly well together--"better safe than sorry!" "You're right, I should've let you kill her." More of that, please.

Speaking of Khan: he had all my sympathy until the gunfight in the woods, and then he totally lost it by wandering away from the only people in the world protecting him because Harold wouldn't immediately answer all of his questions--in the middle of a gunfight, no less! Talk about being too stupid to live. This is actually another place where the rush at the end hurt the ep--Khan wandering away like a ghost felt too contrived. (Also, if Harold didn't want him coming, why didn't they just triple-ziptie the guy and cuff him to the radiator?) But again props to Aasif Mandvi, because he was really really good as Khan--that shot of him being booked and walked to his cell at Riker's and then the camera panning around to his face is really, really effective--and also to Jessica Leccia (hi Natalia!) and Elia Monte-Brown as his wife and assistant, respectively. They were more interesting/charismatic in 2 scenes each than half the numbers this season.

 

This episode tried to make it seem like Khan's biochip was a red herring and the REAL important stuff was his antivirus program searching for The Machine, but I'm wondering if the biochip is going to end up being the actually more important thing after all, if the show goes the Winter Soldier Shaw (Winter Shawdier?) route. The red herring that isn't a red herring at all.

 

Zoe is still AWESOME, and a better match for John than Iris, and that dialogue about Iris was still sooo out of place (and also it's a little obvious that Zoe was in the ep for a hot 1.5 minutes just to check the "Shawdition or similar" box). Also, I could listen to Paige Turco read the phone book all day. Love that voice.

 

Martine and Greer still totally give me the vibe that they're boning in an "absolutely no emotional attachments" kind of way. Ick. I feel like Martine HAS to die before the season is done, but I'm going to miss her--Cara Buono has such presence in the role. She's really great.

 

I had forgotten that the ep began and ended with the payphones ringing--curious to see what the one at the end of the episode was. Next week's cold case, maybe? Seems ominous....

[kahauna]

"I've got places to go, people to kill...."

Yep....I do love me some Ms. Gro-I mean, Root!

[Camera One]

So finally, a PoI who thinks they can do better on their own *actually* gets killed.  I usually hate deaths on shows, but too bad this didn't happen to a few of those obnoxious ones they had ever since they wrote out Shaw.  

 

I did like the scene where they ate take-out with the PoI knocked out at the table.  I agree this episode was much better with a single plot and everyone working as a team rather than two disparate plots.  Enough with Martine and the dumb confrontations.  So now both their guns run out of bullet at the same time?  Give me a break.  I'm surprised it didn't start raining so we could see a mud fight.  

Edited April 13, 2015 by Camera One

[Netfoot]

So finally, a PoI who thinks they can do better on their own *actually* gets killed.  I usually hate deaths on shows, but too bad this didn't happen to a few of those obnoxious ones they had ever since they wrote out Shaw. 

 

Like Harper.

[HawaiiTVGuy]

So finally, a PoI who thinks they can do better on their own *actually* gets killed.  I usually hate deaths on shows, but too bad this didn't happen to a few of those obnoxious ones they had ever since they wrote out Shaw.  

 

I did like the scene where they ate take-out with the PoI knocked out at the table.  I agree this episode was much better with a single plot and everyone working as a team rather than two disparate plots.  Enough with Martine and the dumb confrontations.  So now both their guns run out of bullet at the same time?  Give me a break.  I'm surprised it didn't start raining so we could see a mud fight.  

To be fair, I don't think that Khan really thought he could do better on his own, he was paranoid about what was going on and wasn't getting any straight answers from Finch, so his reaction to run was predictable.  In my opinion, if Finch had "read him in" as Reese wanted, Khan would have seriously considered staying with them.